topic Re: OUTPUT in SAS Programming

OUTPUT

HeatherNewton — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 10:08:01 GMT

data live_account;
merge live_account(in=a) purge(in=b) plan(in=c);
if a and ~b;
by account_no;
;

if card_type in ("PL" "TU") then do;
if plan_num=60000 then output;
end;
else output;
run;

is output here a dataset name or it just means only

if card_type in ("PL "TU") then if plan_num =60000 then output to dataset live_account?

otherwise output everything that is not card_type in ("PL "TU") into dataset live_account?

Re: OUTPUT

PaigeMiller — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 11:05:55 GMT

@HeatherNewton wrote:
data live_account;
merge live_account(in=a) purge(in=b) plan(in=c);
if a and ~b;
by account_no;
;

if card_type in ("PL" "TU") then do;
if plan_num=60000 then output;
end;
else output;
run;
is output here a dataset name or it just means only

if card_type in ("PL "TU") then if plan_num =60000 then output to dataset live_account?

otherwise output everything that is not card_type in ("PL "TU") into dataset live_account?

Whenever you have actual SAS code, you can run the code and see the results. SAS will answer your questions, and do it more quickly than asking questions here. And unlike my answers, which are not correct 100% of the time, you know you will get the correct answer from SAS 100% of the time (maybe even more than 100% of the time!)

Re: OUTPUT

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 12:52:57 GMT

It's always astonishing to see the crazy ways people come up with to make code less understandable, and less maintainable.

data live_account;
merge live_account(in=a) purge(in=b) plan(in=c);

Don't do this. If, during development, the data step has a semantic mistake, dataset live_account will be destroyed, forcing you to recreate it.

if a and ~b;

It is preferable to use the mnemonic NOT in place of the tilde character; some characters may not be available on all platforms, or text processing software tends to replace them with UTF equivalents. A keyword is immune to that.

if card_type in ("PL" "TU") then do;
if plan_num=60000 then output;
end;
else output;

A little Boolean transformation simplifies this:

if card_type not in ("PL" "TU") or plan_num = 60000 then output;

Reading the documentation (Maxim1!) will quickly tell you what the OUTPUT Statement does.